What renting AI costs when the terms change

Since February 2025, people have lost AI tools they paid for or relied on because someone else changed the terms. Our independence page (opens in a new tab) collects those cases as receipts under the headline "Stop renting your mind from five companies."

Here they are in order, with dates and sources.

Humane AI Pin, February 2025

Humane sold its AI Pin at a launch price of $699. The Pin's features ran through Humane's servers, so the device was only as useful as that service.

On February 18, 2025, TechCrunch reported (a story our independence page (opens in a new tab) links) that HP was buying Humane's assets for $116 million. Ten days later, at noon on February 28, 2025, every AI Pin lost calling, messaging and all of its AI features. Refunds covered only purchases from the previous 90 days. Everyone else kept a device that could no longer do the job they bought it for.

GPT-4o, August 2025 to January 2027

OpenAI launched GPT-5 in ChatGPT on August 7, 2025, and removed GPT-4o from ChatGPT for all but Pro users the same day, as our independence page (opens in a new tab) records.

Five days later, on August 12, 2025, OpenAI's own ChatGPT release notes (opens in a new tab) said: "4o is back in the model picker for all paid users by default."

The return lasted about six months. On January 29, 2026, the same release notes announced that GPT-4o would leave ChatGPT on February 13, 2026, along with GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini and o4-mini. OpenAI said GPT-4o would stay available in its API, though it had already told developers that the chatgpt-4o-latest model would leave the API on February 17, 2026. Business, Enterprise and Edu workspaces kept GPT-4o inside Custom GPTs until April 3, 2026, when it was retired from every ChatGPT plan (opens in a new tab).

OpenAI's deprecations page (opens in a new tab) shows that on October 14, 2026, OpenAI told developers its GPT-4o snapshots from August and November 2024 will leave the API on January 14, 2027. The oldest snapshot, from May 2024, shuts down on October 23, 2026.

Claude Fable 5, June and July 2026

On June 12, 2026, three days after launch, a US export-control directive barred any foreign national from using Claude Fable 5 or Claude Mythos 5. Anthropic's notice that day (opens in a new tab) says the directive arrived at 5:21 pm Eastern and that Anthropic complied by switching both models off for every customer. It also disputed the reasoning behind the order, arguing that one narrow, possible jailbreak did not justify recalling a commercial model.

The notice says only that Anthropic was working to restore access. Access returned in early July, according to our independence page.

Then the terms moved again. On July 2, 2026, BleepingComputer reported (a story our independence page (opens in a new tab) cites) that Fable 5 would leave the Pro and Max subscriptions for pay-per-use. Anthropic called demand "very high, and difficult to predict," and said the change was temporary.

From July 20, Max and Team Premium kept Fable 5 at up to 50% of weekly limits. Pro moved to usage credits. As of mid-October 2026, Claude's pricing page (opens in a new tab) still lists Fable on Pro as usage credits only, and it now lists Fable 5.1 as Anthropic's latest model.

What the cases share

The causes differ: a company sale, a product decision, a government order, then a capacity problem. The people who lost access caused none of them. Many had paid or subscribed, all of them relied on the tool, and it changed on a date someone else picked.

A rented AI tool rests on things you never see: the company's finances, its servers, its pricing decisions and the laws it operates under. Any one of them can change the deal overnight. As the page we started with puts it:

Don't rent your thinking from a company that can change the terms while you sleep.

What owning looks like at Offline Base

Our side fits in five words from the same page: "Bought once, yours for good." Here is what that means for Base Drive (opens in a new tab), the first product we plan to launch.

• One price, paid once. Base Drive is planned at $19.99. The product page calls that about what one month of a chatbot subscription costs, "except you pay it once and keep the thing." It is coming soon.
• Runs on your computer. The installer copies the AI onto your Apple Silicon Mac or Windows 11 PC, so the model runs with the drive unplugged and keeps working with Wi-Fi off. Base Drive has no account or usage meter for anyone to switch off.
• Updates you choose. New models and improvements arrive as a fresh drive. The site says it plainly: "Nothing updates itself behind your back." Once installed, what is on your laptop keeps answering until you decide to change it.
• Open-weight models. The drive is planned to carry Liquid AI's LFM2.5 1.2B (opens in a new tab) and Google's Gemma 4 E2B (opens in a new tab), both published on Hugging Face. A copy on your disk keeps working on your machine whatever their makers decide next.

Base Router (opens in a new tab), the always-on box we are designing for the whole home, follows the same rule. It is planned at $400, one time, with no subscription, and it is preview only. Its updates are planned to ship on a USB stick, get checked before they install, and keep the previous version so you can roll back. The page puts it this way: "Offices that stay offline can stay offline."

Base Drive, private AI for the laptop you already own covers the drive in detail, and How Base Drive earns the trust a USB drive needs explains the checksums that setup checks before it copies anything.

Where ownership stops

The independence page has a section called "The honest part." It opens: "Independence cuts both ways: you own the upkeep too."

Owning a model means owning its limits. A small model on your laptop will trail the largest cloud systems on the hardest tasks. It gets better only when you install something newer, and on Base Drive that means a new drive. We are designing optional outside help for hard questions. It would stay off until you turn it on, and it would ask before anything leaves your computer.

Everything this post says about our products is also a plan. No Offline Base product can be ordered as of October 2026, and our terms (opens in a new tab) call every published price, spec and date "a current target." The promise we are building toward: once Base Drive is set up on your laptop, nobody, including us, holds a switch that turns it off.

Why we make local the default for private AI covers the privacy side of the same argument, and What Offline Base is building, and what you can use today lists every product with its current status.